Italian Village Women Make Over 250,000 Meals (Here Are Some of Their Recipes)
If you ever want to get the women elders of the village talking, sit yourself down in the piazza and ask one simple question.
“Would you mind sharing some recipes from the past with me?”
Mayhem ensues. Ingredients, recipes, stories, plants… weeds! They talk over each other, agreeing, disagreeing...a cacophony of voices and a flurry of hands. They are clearly excited that someone wants to hear about what has been, though thoroughly enjoyed, taken for granted.
Most of these women have been cooking for a long time, and for a lot of people, and on a low budget.
To give you a sense of the hours spent growing, picking, planning, buying and cooking (never mind cleaning up!), meet Linda.
Linda Fieno was born in 1936 and has lived in Sant’Angelo all her life. Her mother died when she was 14, a mere five years after the end of WWII. From then on the role of feeding her father and four siblings fell to Linda. Lunch and dinner for the whole family, every single day.
As a young woman Linda worked also at the local elementary school making meals for the roughly 32 children and staff every day. The village school ran Monday through Saturday.
Sunday a day of rest? I don’t think so. Sundays are a big family meal day!
Let’s do the math.
From the age of 14 until she was married at the age of 18, Linda cooked for her father and siblings.
4 years of meals for 6 people 2 times per day = 2,920 meals or 17,520 plates of food.
Between the ages of 18 and 36 when she started working at the local elementary school, Linda primarily cared for her husband and 3 children.
18 years of meals for 5 people 2 times per day = 13,140 meals or 65,700 plates of food.
From approximately 1976 - 1992 Linda cooked lunch for the children and staff of the elementary school.
16 years of lunch for roughly 35 mouths, 6 days a week, 200 or so days per year = 3,200 meals
16 years of still cooking for some, if not all, of her family everyday = 11,680 meals
A total of 14,880 meals, or 170,400 plates of food.
The grand total = 253,620 plates of food in 42 years.
Another 28 years have gone by and though Linda lost her husband in 2008, her family has grown to include 6 grandchildren and 1 great grandchild.
And that’s just one woman. Imagine the collective total of the meals created by these creative village women!
If you are imagining merely hundreds of thousands of pounds of pasta on those plates, you would be mistaken.
The women of the village used an abundance of vegetables both grown and wild picked from the hills and the side of the road.
Flora Neri, aged 78 with 3 children of her own, and another prodigious cook, joined Linda to share some recipes from the old days using the ingredients that they had at the time.
Note: The following are not ‘use 1/4 cup of this and 2 tablespoons of that’ recipes. That’s not how these women cook. They are designed to show you a few examples of what they made when not everything was available as it is now. This is by no means the extent of their repertoire, or an example of Sunday or holiday meals. We’re talking everyday feeding when people did not have much money and grocery stores were very few and far between.
Local Recipes
Times have changed since the war and food is more widely available. We thank these village women for sharing their immense knowledge and providing nutritious and sustaining food to everyone. Every day, all year long.
Porcacchia (poorkakia)
Porcacchia is the local name for the plant Purslane (Portulaca oleracea). In ancient Egypt it was used as a medicinal plant and was widely cultivated in the Mediterranean basin since the time of the middle ages. Unfortunately, now it is considered little more than a weed in gardens, for those who do not recognize it and aren’t aware of its many beneficial properties.
Diuretic
Thirst quenching
Digestive
Anti-diabetic
Anti-bacterial
Anti-inflammatory
Anti-oxident
Purifying
It is however beginning to make a come back and is something you will find at many farmers markets in the USA. Its flavor is similar to spinach and watercress with a slightly sour and salty taste.
Village women would simply use it for cold salads. Or they might boil it as a warm vegetable with a little olive oil and salt. Or throw it in a frittata (omelette). Or toss it with pasta and cherry tomatoes. Or add to a soup. There was plenty of it and it was free.
Pizzicotti (cooked pinch)
Pizzicotti is simply a dough of flour, water, and yeast.
Boil a pot of water. Take a ¼ inch pinch of the dough and drop into the boiling water. When they rise to the surface they are done. Strain.
There were times when there was no cheese available, so they topped the little nuggets with bread crumbs, olive oil, garlic, salt & pepper.
These women were able to make even the simplest ingredients tasty.
Aqua Cotta (cooked water)
A quick lunch or light supper, Aqua cotta was more of a stew than a soup and lent itself to variations depending on what was on hand.
The base is water boiled with garlic, potato, onion, and always mint. Eggs are cracked and dropped into the water to cook at the last moment.
Ficarelli (baby figs)
This was a fresh treat after a long winter. There were about ten days in early April when you could pick baby figs from the tree. And you still can!
Clean and take off the stems, cut in half and soak in water until ready to cook. Rinse the figs and throw in a frying pan with garlic and olive oil cooking slowly until broken down. When just about done, sprinkle flour on top before taking out of the pan to eat.
